News

Security searches‘too intimate’

Female passengers are being subjected to "intrusive and embarrassing" security searches at British airports, according to Ann Moffat, the MP for East Lothian. The Labour MP claims that she has been forced to endure "over-the-top" body searches at Edinburgh and Heathrow, and that other women, including fellow MPs, had complained of overly intimate treatment by security officials.

Ms Moffat is calling for the introduction of US-style handheld scanners, which she says are less invasive than the gloved hands of a security worker, and is meeting with the British Airports Authority (BAA) to discuss the matter. She is also seeking to raise the issue in a House of Commons debate.

BAA says that it is only following orders: "It's a Department for Transport requirement that the secondary search is a hand search. We already have handheld scanners as backup."

The US Transport Security Administration (TSA) says that the handheld detectors used